


sorry about the blood in your mouth

by kimaracretak



Category: Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
Genre: A.C.M.E. is not a pretty organisation, F/F, Light Bondage, Treasures of Knowledge, Treasures of Knowledge Canon, i mean it g'way with yr kids and quiz shows, yes i am aware this game is meant for the 8-10yo set bite me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:13:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(she's a rebel, she's a saint, she's the salt of the earth and she's dangerous): jules was never very good at saying no to carmen. she still isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sorry about the blood in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> but really how do you NOT come away from playing treasures of knowledge with a massive carmen/jules situation
> 
> dedicated to aisling because she is the best enabler who also provides glitterskulls
> 
> sections epigraphs from richard siken's 'litany in which certain things are crossed out'

_01\. forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness._  
  
It starts —  
  
— in a nightclub in Brasília, Carmen’s lips on her ear as she describes what it was like to grow up in a city just a few decades older than herself, Jules’ protestations that they should leave, that they’re _on duty_ drowning in the music and the heat and Carmen’s delight at being home.  
  
— in an alleyway in Glasgow, Carmen’s wide eyes gazing up at her in disbelief as Jules presses bloodstained hands to the gaping hole in her chest whispering _don’t die_ when she realizes: she has no idea how to go on without Carmen as her partner.  
  
— in a field somewhere in one of the endless middle America states, all roads that blur into each other and skies so blue and clear that it hurts to look at them, Carmen healed and so alive that when Jules realizes _i think i’m falling in love with her_ it feels more like she’s suffocating with the possibility of love.  
  
No, none of these are true. She cannot say when it — that nebulous loving codependency, that addiction to the endless, magnificent, sometimes terrible ideas Carmen carries wrapped up in her normally unassuming frame (ideas Jules soon finds herself coming up with, to her horror and Carmen’s delight) — truly starts because Carmen’s just always been there. For all of her life that matters, that is, because the years at home and then the years at college don’t really count when she compares them to what came after the redheaded whirlwind swept into her life and said _let’s have an adventure_. She was never good at saying no to Carmen. She still isn’t.  
  
  
 _02\. so maybe i wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation._  
  
This is what no one knows: Carmen asked her to leave with her. Twice.  
  
The first time it was — she thought at the time — a blip, Carmen giving in to the frustration of more than thirty six hours without sleep dodging the police on Moscow’s icy streets.  
  
“Don’t you ever wonder what would happen if we just . . . left?” Carmen asks softly, each word leaving her mouth on a breath of air that hangs, sparkling, in front of them. They’re in the back of an alleyway, all in white and grey to blend in with the snow. Jules is aiming her handgun down the alley, tense even though she knows she’s the better shot; Carmen is beside her with her grappler loose at her side, seemingly as relaxed as if they were back home watching a movie.  
  
Jules steals a quick look at Carmen’s face. Lines of weariness are etched around her eyes, escaped hair clinging to the chapstick she keeps reapplying in vain hope of protection against the constant wind. But there’s nothing to hint that she’s joking, the smile in her eyes that can’t resist coming out whenever Carmen’s just having a laugh absent. “Nothing good, I’m sure,” she says cautiously. Agents retire or they die but no one’s ever just left before (or if they have, no one’s heard about it, and that’s almost more frightening). “Why would we want to?”  
  
Carmen gives a half shrug. “I dunno. Don’t you even just get tired of all this?” She takes in their surroundings with a lazy sweep of her hand, all ice and barbed wire and concrete blocks.  
  
“Of course not,” Jules is taken aback that she’d even ask. Doesn’t Carmen love all this just as much as she does? The thrill of the chase, the delight of the capture, ditching their trackers to find dive restaurants in areas of the cities they were never supposed to be in? “It’s fun. And we’re doing good work here.”  
  
“Are we, really?”  
  
And then the gunfire starts again, and Carmen is swinging them both up to the rooftop, and there’s no more time for talking.  
  
The second time Carmen comes to her in the middle of the night and Jules knows she’s serious because she starts the conversation by kissing her and calling her Julia. “Julia,” she says, running her fingers through Jules’ hair, “do you remember Moscow?”  
  
They spent a lot of time in Moscow together, because that’s what happens when wars end and countries tumble apart into disparate pieces: you race between new capitols, your partner’s hand clenched tightly in yours, staying one step ahead of new wars and new revolutions. But Jules knows immediately which trip Carmen’s referring to.  
  
“You asked me if we should leave A.C.M.E.,” she answers, fear collecting like a stone in the pit of her stomach. “You didn’t . . . Carmen, you didn’t really mean it, did you?”  
  
Carmen smiles then, small and sad, and Jules suddenly knows exactly how the night is going to end. “No, Carmen, you’re not serious, they need us now more than ever. The Balkans —”  
  
“That’s exactly the problem, Julia,” Carmen says, voice rough with smoke, and Jules is worried because the last time Carmen smoked was the night after twelve agents died in a fire in Vienna and the two of them had to spend four hours ID’ing bodies. “You told me, in Moscow, that we were doing good with A.C.M.E.”  
  
“We _are_ ,” Jules says, reaching out for Carmen’s hand, but Carmen pulls her hands back, tucking them into the sleeves of the trenchcoat she’s been wearing more and more often lately. “Carmen, what is this about?”  
  
“You ever ask yourself who we’re doing good _for_?”  
  
Jules shakes her head. “I don’t have to. It’s good for everyone.” _It has to be._ She tries to look at Carmen with new eyes, tries to see what shifted in her partner in the time since - since when? When did Carmen decide she wanted to give up everything they had fought for for the past six years?  
  
“It’s not good for everyone, it’s good for _us_. Who let us play games with everyone’s lives like this, all for the sake of some politician who’s never going to know our name?”  
  
“Carmen, you _live_ for games,” Jules says in exasperation, trying valiantly to banish the images of all the times Carmen left her tied to their bed in nameless motels. And not just in their personal lives — the world had been Carmen’s playing field, everyone she met a game piece (except Jules, she whispered in her ear their first night together as her fingers explored the foreign geography of Jules’ skin, because Jules was too smart and too fascinating to be anything other than Carmen’s equal).  
  
Carmen turns away, swallowing hard, and for the first times Jules realizes that half the roughness in her voice must be from fighting back tears. “Not these sorts of games. Not the sorts of games that end up with thousands of defenceless people dead. You know all those pretty missions they send us on? The ones that end up with us smiling next to some world leader or another, that are supposed to make us feel really good about freedom and democracy and all that shit? Half the time they’re just figureheads for our own government, the other half they’re only in power now because we fixed A.C.M.E’s old mistakes.”  
  
“No,” Jules sits down on the bed, hard, willing none of it to be true, for it all to just be one more game, even as she knows that’s not possible. “No, Carmen, we save people. That is what we do.”  
  
“Who decides who’s worth saving?” When Carmen turns back, there are tears in her eyes, and Jules realizes that she’s never seen her cry, not once. “Who decides what artifacts we take, what cultures we preserve? Who makes the decision that it’s okay to destroy everything else?”  
  
Jules shuts her eyes, unable to bear the naked truth in Carmen’s. She swallows hard. “What’s next?” she asks harshly. “What other rugs are you planning to pull out from under me tonight? Why are you here?” She doesn’t realize she’s almost yelling until she feels Carmen sit beside her, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead.  
  
“Because you’re my partner in every way, and I want you to come with me. Because I love you.”  
  
She had always known that loving Carmen was terrifying — had known it since Brasília. But it was supposed to be terrifyingly beautiful, not terrifying like watching the bits of her life spill across the sky like broken glass and knowing that the one person she had trusted to help hold her together was leaving her with the shards. “Carmen, this is my — this is _our_ life. Please.” Carmen looks at her sadly, and Jules feels every day of their two-year age difference laid out between them, feels very young and very naive and very alone. “You’ll find me. I know you will. You’re A.C.M.E.’s best agent now, aren’t you?” She gets up, then, disappears out the window, and by the time Jules has crossed the room she can’t see even the tails of Carmen’s trenchcoat, just her discarded bracelet on the ledge as a parting gift. Jules sinks to the floor, running the bracelet through shaking fingers, suddenly too numb to even wonder what’s going to happen next.  
  
So all those looks the other agents give her in the hallways, cold and unflinching with _she’s only gone because of you_ lingering barely unsaid beneath them? They only hurt because she knows she deserves them.  
  
  
 _03\. here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed. crossed out._  
  
But really? It’s so hard for her to be good without Carmen. They used to joke that it didn’t matter who was the best because they were the best together, but deep down they both knew Carmen was the driving force behind their team. It was Carmen who turned Jules’ endless stream of facts into workable intel, Carmen who knew how to extricate her from the depths of her own mind on the worst days. Jules starts tensing up in the field, unable to trust the succession of new agents the chief partners her with to watch her back. She’s forgotten how to balance her need for order with the chaos of fieldwork without Carmen’s impulsiveness to let her know it’s okay to simply move with the situation as it unfolds. Without Carmen she’s good but she’s nowhere near the best. Admitting it makes her feel like she failed the both of them.  
  
She asks for a leave of absence three weeks after Carmen vanishes, meeting the Chief’s gaze steadily across the cluttered desk between them.  
  
“I was wondering when you were going to ask, Jules,” the Chief says quietly. “I’ve watched you trying to drown yourself in work these past few weeks and if you hadn’t come forward I was going to suggest it myself. Just — promise me you won’t go after her yourself. I know you knew her better than anyone else here, but you’re too close to the situation.”  
  
“I won’t,” Jules says, trying very hard not to laugh in the Chief’s face. The teams could look all they wanted and they’d never find Carmen if she didn’t want to be found by them. Jules could find her, if she really wanted, she knows Carmen would allow that. But what would she say to her?  
  
Jules goes home to their — no, _her_ , it’s only her apartment now, for the first time since Carmen left it for the last time weeks ago, verbs thrumming in her head the whole way because it’s an easier way to parse the feelings that going home brings up.  
  
 _Eu deixei_ , I left, but I wasn’t brave enough to; _tu deixaste_ , you left, and I couldn’t follow; _ela deixou_ , she left, and is anyone else angry about losing Carmen or just her skills; _nós deixámos_ , we left, or we should have because when was the last time we didn’t do something together; _vós deixastes_ , you (all) left, but no one else did you’re all alone now; _elas deixaram_ , they left, if I had left with you which of us would they blame?  
  
She finds the note waiting for her when she unlocks the door. She knows without looking it’s from Carmen, just as she knows without looking that it’s not one of the semi-innocuous notes she used to leave, all “please remember to buy coffee today or I may invade Cuba for some on my own,” or “if I bring home a gibbon tomorrow please do not murder either of us it would be a terrible mess”. She unfolds the letter with shaking hands, and even though the gibbon had been just as much of a disaster as it had sounded like she would have preferred that to what she found.  
  
Dates. Names. Lists of artifacts stolen by agents, a chronicle of history being written and rewritten to suit pretty whitewashed ideals. Jules had been too shocked by Carmen’s departure to ask her for details that last night, but she had been turning Carmen’s words over and over in her head ever since, wondering where she could find proof. And here it was, all neatly laid out in Carmen’s meticulous spiky handwriting.  
  
Almost worst, at the end: _Julia, stay strong, stay safe. If not for yourself, then for me. I hope this convinces you of my sincerity but if it doesn’t, I can only hope you love me enough to make sure they never find me. I never wanted to break you like this. I want to be with you, helping you stitch back the pieces of us. But I don’t think I deserve that anymore. They’ll make you hunt me, and what you decide to do with that is up to you. Be strong, be safe, cross out the ruins and build something new._  
  
The paper is stained with her tears before she’s halfway through.  
  
  
 _04\. here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all forgiven, even though we didn’t deserve it._  
  
After reading the letter, it’s pointless to ask why Carmen left. Jules knows her too well to think that she’d be fine with subverting A.C.M.E. from the inside, with pulling quick, unnoticeable sleights of hand on missions for long. Because looking at the list, she can pick out their own missions, recoveries she and Carmen had been sent on that she thought would have ended up in their failure column. But now, she realizes, looking at the neat little “(r)”s next to their names, they must have been things Carmen had tried to fix.  
  
There were the Viking statues in Stavanger, which they had been asked to recover for a midlevel Norwegian politician but that had ended up in a museum instead. Personally, Jules remembers the Stavanger trip more for the free wine the hotel concierge had given them after Carmen batted her eyelashes at him, and for how stunning Carmen had looked spread out on their bed, silk scarves wound through her hair, around her wrists, and through the slats of the headboard, and for the delight of feeling the strain of Carmen’s arms as she pulled against the restraints as Jules’ fingers curled inside her, for how Carmen’s lips felt on her oversensitive skin when she returned the favor. But that was also the first mission that they lost their target, and when Jules worried about what the Chief would say when they returned, Carmen stroked her ribs under her thin t-shirt and reminded Jules that with their previously impeccable record, no one would care.  
  
In Morocco, she remembers, they had barely even tried for the relics, having been pulled away straight after the Venice fire. They had spent the first night in a tangle of limbs and blankets, trying to remember how to breathe without choking on smoke and ash and the reek of burned flesh; the first day wandering hand and hand through twisted streets and colorful shops, buying each other jeweled trinkets and spiced teas and stealing quiet kisses in otherwise bustling coffee houses. They spent the evening dancing, the night letting the taste of each others’ salt-sweet skin chase away the last of Venice’s bad memories. In the morning, after a perfunctory search-and-interview at the relics’ last known location, they had mutually decided that their own recovery was more important. So few relics where they should be, out of so many raids disguised as setting history and politics back on their rightful course.  
  
Ironic, Jules thinks, but Carmen’s probably doing better staying on the right side of the law as a fugitive than as a government agent. She wishes she had followed Carmen that night. It’s not the first time she’s made the wish and it won’t be the last, but all the gadgets in A.C.M.E.’s vaults don’t let her turn back time. She wonders if Carmen would take her back, if she showed up on the former agent’s doorstep today. She wonders which one of them Carmen thinks need to be forgiven.  
  
  
 _05\. dear forgiveness, you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things i want to ask you._  
  
It ends —  
  
— in a tomb in Cairo, Carmen vanishing in the aftermath of an impeccably timed flash-bang, leaving a mound of treasures, a furious Hawkins, and Jules with a mix of relief and pride she knows she shouldn’t be feeling at all.  
  
— in an otherwise-deserted ferry off the coast of Kitakyūshū, quick hands and frantic kisses as the drone of an A.C.M.E. copter grows louder and louder, Jules’ knowledge that soon Carmen will slip away over the side and when Hawkins comes aboard and finds her sweaty and disheveled she will need to blame it on a fight with Carmen not stopping her from biting Carmen’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood when she comes.  
  
— in a darkened museum in Johennesburg, Carmen on the floor cuffed to the base of a statue while Jules kneels between her spread legs, each touch a tease and a promise as Carmen arches silently against her mouth, and after when Jules tucks the key into Carmen’s bra and says _you have five minutes_ she knows the other woman will only need one and a half to be free again.  
  
No, none of these are true. She cannot say it ends because if she says it it means she stops chasing Carmen across country lines and archaeological digs, she gives up on her friend, her partner, her lover. If she says it ends it means she’s accepting a life where she’s refused Carmen’s last, greatest invitation for adventure. And after all — she’s never been good at saying no to Carmen.


End file.
